The Best Smart Hub

After researching more than 20 smart hubs—the brains that let all of your smart-home devices work together—and then living with a half-dozen of them for a few months while putting them through their paces with an array of smart locks, thermostats, room sensors, switches, lights, and more, we think that the Samsung SmartThings Hub is the best hub for most people who want to buy right now. It’s competitively priced, is compatible with a large number of third-party devices, and supports most of the major wireless protocols relied on by smart devices. We think it’s important to note, however, that we struggle to fully throw our support behind any one model without substantial reservations. That isn’t to say we didn’t find a lot to like. The smart home is tremendously fun, especially for tinkerers, and the SmartThings hub is the most evolved among a number of well-rounded products out already. Still, to date, we don’t believe that any one smart hub is an unqualified, home-run purchase that would satisfy most people—our baseline standard. But if you’re ready to jump into an integrated smart home, we have plenty of advice for you.

The Samsung SmartThings Hub is a polished, powerful option for tech-savvy DIYers who have a desire for an integrated smart home but lack the budget for or interest in a professionally installed system. It’s easy to set up on your home network, and pairing it with other smart devices is largely seamless. Though we do have some quibbles with its companion app (we’ll go into detail about them below), and we’ve heard reports of glitches with complex setups and some security issues, the system is impressively comprehensive, and with a little time, an array of compatible sensors, and some elbow grease, a dedicated owner could assemble an impressively automated and functional smart-home experience. (For less ambitious types, the Home Monitoring Kit, a starter kit that includes a selection of sensors for a lightweight home security/monitoring system, is also a worthy option). The variables are nearly infinite, but as an idea of what’s possible, think of a system that detects when someone is home, turns your lights on and off, adjusts the thermostat depending on the time of day or room to room when people are present, interfaces with your home audio system, monitors your home when you’re away, and sends you notifications should something seem amiss.

Easy to set up, compatible with a good-size range of popular third-party devices, and has a cleanly designed and useful companion app.

The Wink Hub has been a popular option since its introduction, and it’s compatible with a wide range of smart-home devices. It’s easy to set up and has a largely friendly app that makes checking up on and controlling devices simple. Within the Wink app, advanced users can create automated actions, dubbed “robots”—a useful feature that might be a little demanding for beginners. We especially appreciate that, like the soon-to-be-discontinued Staples Connect hub, you can place Wink anywhere in your home without having to tether it to your network router—a real boon if you have a large home or wireless signal issues.

Table of contents

Who should get this

A smart hub is essential for anyone who wants to use a single centralized app to control their wirelessly connected lights, thermostats, smoke alarms, motion detectors, sound systems, or any other smart-home devices and appliances. A smart hub acts as the middleman in a system, facilitating communications between all your various devices and enabling control of them too. It can also automate your devices so they work with each other without any interaction from you. You can easily set up simple scenarios such as having the system automatically turn on the lights whenever you unlock your front door; a more complex system and a little work can let you set up the hub to use inputs from various sensors and switches and adjust devices in your house accordingly. The DIY hubs we tested for our guide are a fraction of the cost of the top-shelf home-automation systems that are custom-installed by the pros, though to get anywhere near the same level of functionality and polish takes a little effort.

Setting up and using a smart hub requires a functional level of tech know-how, at a minimum the ability to use a smartphone or tablet and apps, as well as familiarity with pairing Bluetooth devices and/or logging your various devices onto your Wi-Fi network. It’s helpful to be familiar with the jargon around home networking and home appliances and to understand that more complicated setups may require a bit of patience, a few hours of perusing online help forums, or a call or two to tech support. Overall, we’d say the difficulty level of setting up a hub with a couple of devices is comparable with that of setting up a home wireless network in the first place, but with more advanced setups the sky’s the limit, especially if you have some coding experience.

How we picked

Because connected products have so many different competing technologies among them, we searched for hubs that offered compatibility with as many products and standards as reasonably possible, yet remained easy to set up and use. There are a lot of new wireless systems, network protocols, and connectivity options—many of them incompatible and from a lot of different companies (many of which are young and unproven). Mitch Klein, president of The Z-Wave Alliance, one of the largest wireless technology consortiums, described the current state of the smart-home category as “the Wild West.”

We paid careful attention to which types of wireless signals were supported by a given hub. As with a smartphone or computer, many devices can communicate using a Bluetooth signal or Wi-Fi, but several wireless standards, some proprietary, have been developed specifically for smart-home products. The most common are Z-Wave and ZigBee, though you’ll also find Insteon and Clear Connect, among others. Works with Nest and HomeKit have become more common as Google and Apple, respectively, have concentrated on home products, though their range of devices is still limited.

Despite hubs being relatively inexpensive (currently $100 or less), once you start building a system of sensors, cameras, lights, and other accessories, your costs will rise quickly. Anyone investing in equipment should have some peace of mind that what they buy won’t become obsolete overnight. We also nixed hubs that required buying into a very expensive ecosystem to get started, such as ones from HomeSeer, or those that require custom or professional installation, such as Savant.

After cutting down our list using the criteria above—price, installation options, and compatibility—we consulted veterans in the field, including representatives from Apple, Nest, Insteon, Lutron, and the Z-Wave Alliance, as well as a number of editorial resources and customer testimonials. Our final test group included the following six models: D-Link Staples Connect Hub, Insteon Hub Pro, the Lowe’s Iris Smart Hub, Lutron Caséta Smart Lighting Dimmer Kit, Samsung SmartThings Hub, and Wink Hub.

How we tested

To discover what these hubs are capable of, we pulled together a collection of test smart devices (from several manufacturers) that we think would be desirable for a typical household, including light bulbs, outlet switches, thermostats, door and window sensors, cameras, water sensors, and door locks. All but the D-Link Staples Connect Hub and the Wink Hub came to us with one or more compatible accessories as part of a starter kit, what you might call a “smart home in a box.”

We intended our tests to reveal the hub that had the best combination of versatility and ease-of-use with maximum compatibility. Specifically that meant a hub that supports a wide, if not necessarily comprehensive, range of the various wireless protocols employed by smart-home products, and accompanying software that makes it easy to set up smart devices, control them, and ultimately create automated schemes so that they function with little to no prodding from us for certain scenarios.

We tested the smart hubs with a wide range of accessories, including thermostats, cameras, outlet switches, motion and door/window sensors, light switches, an Amazon Echo, and a door lock.

Our test regimen for each hub included downloading, installing, and registering an app, connecting the hub to our home network, going through the setup procedure, and then pairing each hub with as many devices as possible among our range of test accessories. We then gave ourselves some time to get familiar with the controls available in each app to individually control our test devices (again, where possible) and then also to create “scenes” or macros, essentially scenarios you prepare and either trigger at will or, if you prefer, set to occur automatically. That is where things get both interesting and complex. The hubs varied significantly in terms of the number of devices that we could connect, so creating a master scene that would work for each hub wasn’t possible; however, we felt that we were able to get a representative experience for each hub.

When performing our tests, we paid close attention to how friendly and intuitive the setup process was when setting up the hub and, in particular, when linking devices together to create scenes or macro actions. Compatibility with wireless protocols was a key concern, as well as whether a hub needed to be directly connected to our home router or could be located remotely—a major issue if you have a large home or one with spotty wireless issues. Another techie concern was whether a hub was able to perform some actions without having to first relay an instruction to the cloud and back to my home again, which often can result in communications lag. Almost as important as the physical components of a hub is the companion app you use to control it, and so we spent most of our time using apps to set up devices, link them together, create scenes, and tweak notifications settings, wherever possible. In doing so we found that, all things being equal, the app is the major deciding factor in a hub’s appeal.

The app is the major deciding factor in a hub’s appeal.

One discovery that wasn’t obvious: Two hubs might be compatible with an identical device but have differing abilities to control that device. For instance, though we were able to pair a Monoprice smart lock with a Wink hub, it didn’t allow for full control, such as programming access codes to the lock. Diagnosing such partial compatibility is impossible, except on a device-by-device basis, but that also explains in part the difficulty of making apples-to-apples comparisons when picking a hub.

The Samsung SmartThings Hub is the most evolved among a number of well-rounded products already on the market. It’s competitively priced, is compatible with a wide range of third-party devices, and supports most of the major smart-home wireless protocols, including Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, ZigBee and Z-Wave. Samsung also offers a small collection of SmartThings sensors, including window, door, water, motion, and outlet units, plus a wired camera, if you want to build a complete home-monitoring system. The companion controller app can be confounding (see Flaws but not dealbreakers), but within its many submenus and sections is a wealth of capability and, with some planning, the right smart accessories and devices, and patience—lots of patience—you can create a rich home-automation scheme that can hum along without requiring you to monitor it constantly. In the right hands, the SmartThings hub can steer the ship of a comprehensive DIY smart-home setup.

In the right hands, the SmartThings hub can steer the ship of a comprehensive DIY smart-home setup.

Setting up the SmartThings hub is straightforward, as it was with most of the hubs we tested. The pucklike unit must be wired directly to your home router and gets power from the wall—nicely, it has battery backup good for about 10 hours should the power fail. On the hub’s rear are two USB ports, which currently are dormant (they’re for future updates). We connected our test unit, and while it was booting up we downloaded the app, registered a new, free SmartThings account within the app, and then followed on-screen directions for pairing the app with the hub. As part of the process, our smartphone was paired with the system, which going forward used geofencing to know when we were home or away. It was perfectly simple, and we ran into hiccups only when we attempted to pair our sensors.

The SmartThings companion app, which is required for setting up and controlling the hub, takes a lot more work to understand. Compared with the more streamlined app offerings from Insteon or even D-Link Staples, the SmartThings app is positively full of icons, buttons, submenus, and subsections. Though you could certainly get by using only a fraction of the functions offered, we recommend digging in a bit to get an idea of what SmartThings is capable of—and also why it may be a little too much for some potential users.

You can pair devices to the SmartThings hub a few ways.

To test out the SmartThings hub we paired it with a selection of SmartThings-branded sensors (motion, water, and multipurpose sensors), an Ecobee3 thermostat, a pair of Cree Connected bulbs, and a Schlage Connect keypad deadbolt. The process of pairing a device, though not onerous, is more involved than we’d like, especially compared with simpler two- or three-button-press setups with the Wink hub, for instance. To wit: To pair something, you must first head to the upper right of any page in the app and click the three white dots to reveal a drop-down menu. Then you select Connect New Device. From there, you pick from a menu of device categories, some obviously labeled (Lighting & Switches, Climate Control) others more obtuse (Coming and Going). If you pick a device category, you’re taken to a page of subcategories. Select a subcategory and you’re taken to another page of company names. Selecting a company name takes you to another page with possibly even more items. Once you get through this labyrinth of nested menus, you then put your chosen device into pairing mode, usually by powering it up, and then it should appear as a device on a radarlike graphic in the app. Though the hub’s range is 50 to 150 feet, Samsung recommends that you attempt this process within 15 feet of your hub (not doing so explained some early pairing failures we suffered). In practice, this process is easy to follow and not quite as contorted as it may read, but it’s also nowhere near as streamlined as it could be: The Wink hub, for instance, lets you scan a barcode to pair many devices, a mechanism also used for pairing HomeKit and Nest devices, too.

The SmartThings dashboard gives you an at-a-glance status check of your system.

The SmartThings app has four main sections, represented by icons at the bottom of the app’s screen: Dashboard, My Home, Routines, and Marketplace. The Dashboard is the default screen and is where you arm or disarm your home-monitoring sensors and keep tabs on their current status: A large graphic panel is either vibrant green, signifying all is okay, or throbbing red, meaning a sensor was tripped. The My Home section lets you browse through your devices and sensors and control them individually (you can also opt to view them grouped by rooms, or as a comprehensive list of all the devices on your system).

A water sensor sends a speedy notification when it detects a leak.

When setting up sensors for home monitoring, you can choose from three preset categories: Security, Smoke, and Leaks. Pick the appropriate one for whatever device you want to pair and you’ll be prompted to configure any notifications you want, from text and push notifications to activation of a siren to lights or video capture (with compatible cameras). You also have the option to craft custom, specific triggers and notifications using your arsenal of sensors and devices.

SmartApps can extend the functionality of your smart devices, such as adding automated functions.

To jump ahead a bit, the Marketplace section is where you can find user-submitted custom code (often created to make third-party smart devices—such as a Nest thermostat—compatible) and Smart Apps, which are either officially supported apps that SmartThings has vetted, or unapproved apps produced and submitted by community members. We downloaded and installed Virtual Thermostat, an app that lets you control a space heater or window AC using the thermostat from one of your various sensors. It’s a supercool aspect of SmartThings. It’s also way too complex for the average user, and so will likely go unused by most hub owners. But this isn’t a problem because the hub doesn’t rely on such apps for its core functionality.

You can set up routines to perform multiple actions with the press of a single button.

Along with Dashboard, Routines is the most commonly used page in the app, and it comes preconfigured with icons for four enthusiastic presets: Good Morning!, Good Night!, Goodbye!, and I’m Back! The idea is that at any point you can go directly to this menu item and hit one of these buttons and have an individual action or series of actions take place; for instance, hitting Good Night! might pause your Sonos radio, turn off all your lights, arm your home-monitoring system, and drop the thermostat’s temperature. You also have the option to create your own presets (or rename existing ones), such as vacation, houseguests, or panic. A given routine can be location aware or geofence based, use a schedule or your smartphone’s location as a trigger, and can be tweaked for each member of your household.

Helpfully, SmartThings walks you through setting up modes for monitoring your home.

The ability to control and automate really fine interactions between sensors is truly impressive, and just a few years ago would have been found only in far-more-expensive professional installs. And it’s setting up a routine where a techie familiar with “if this, then that” (IFTTT) conditional-statement algorithms will feel right at home—but probably also where less-dogged enthusiasts will drop everything and rebox the SmartThings hub for a return. In our experience, SmartThings struck us as a largely helpful and intuitive system, and being able to create a handful of easily accessed presets goes a long way toward cutting out some of the tedium of using a smartphone for interacting with smart devices, which is kind of the point. This system is tremendously helpful, and though it no doubt has a level of complexity to it, we found it manageable enough that we could set it and forget it, as the saying goes.

SmartThings has now partnered with Scout, a professional security service that offers paid 24/7 monitoring of your DIY system starting at $20 a month. We didn’t include this professional service in our review, but it may be of interest to those considering a DIY home security system.

In our tests, the SmartThings hub and its sensors worked consistently and reliably, and in particular the hub registered alerts from the sensors quickly. (We read a few online accounts of some power users with complex setups having issues with their hubs turning items on and off randomly, which is concerning; however, that was not our experience). Holding a sensor in our hands with our smartphone in front of us and the SmartThings app open, we could trigger a state change in the sensor and see it displayed in the app within a second or so. Similarly, actual notifications from the motion, multipurpose, and water leak sensors hit our smartphones within a few seconds of the sensors being tripped, both when we were at home and also when not connected to our home network. (That also includes a few occasions when the hub went offline—which is both useful but also distressing.)

We did extensive research on hubs in general and the SmartThings hub in particular, and believe our experience is consistent with the reviews and findings of most other outlets: Namely, of all the hubs on the market, the Samsung SmartThings Hub is the most powerful and promising, but is best suited to devout tinkerers and those willing to spend a fair amount of time tweaking and refining their smart-home system.

Growing pains and security concerns

As we neared publication of this guide we became aware of recent articles and some high-profile forum discussions that suggest some SmartThings users were experiencing serious glitches with their systems, possibly following a system update. We value user feedback and see it as always worth including in our analysis, but we also think it’s crucial to note that using the experience of isolated users—with unknown systems—to make a general recommendation is problematic. For instance, at least some of the users registering complaints seem to have especially complex systems comprising dozens of sensors and devices, some of which may or may not be officially supported. (Given the flexibility of the SmartThings system and its options for custom code, this is going to be an issue.) We reached out to Samsung for clarification, and a spokesperson responded with the following:

“SmartThings is committed to solving the issues that some users have experienced. Over the past weeks, SmartThings has thoroughly evaluated its platform and has made a number of major improvements already, including the release of an entirely new backend scheduling database so that routines and scheduled actions run more smoothly and reliably. There will be a series of updates coming every week and we expect users to see greatly improved performance, reliability and stability.”

Additionally, a potential security issue with the SmartThings system was recently revealed in a paper published by researchers from the University of Michigan. In particular, the researchers found that under the right conditions intruders could exploit certain SmartApps (which we discuss in more detail below), which in theory would allow an intruder to, among other things, digitally “pick” a smart lock that was part of a SmartThings network. We reached out to SmartThings, which responded that the company had been working with the researchers to fix the security issues (one had already been patched) and that the company had existing processes in place to screen out SmartApps that could be the source of such a break-in. Though these security issues are indeed an important concern and should be addressed, for now these particular exploits can be neutralized by concerned users by not installing unvetted third-party smart apps, limiting what privileges apps have access to—and in the most extreme case, not connecting mission-critical devices to a SmartThings system.

We’ll continue to monitor both of these developments and update our guide as we learn more.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

As a mainstream device, the SmartThings hub does a reasonable job of balancing basic functionality and device control with the potential for powerful, complex home automation. Without resorting to tutorials and instructions we were able to figure out how to pair devices (we had some difficulty until we realized we needed to be within a dozen or so feet of the hub to pair), navigate within the app, and enable monitoring. Despite this, throughout our testing the app remained a major friction point and a source of confusion and frustration.

As a mainstream device, the SmartThings hub does a reasonable job of balancing basic functionality and device control with the potential for powerful, complex home automation.

A CNET review of the SmartThings hub notes “its performance speaks for itself, it works very well. Unfortunately, its app interface (I used the iOS version) is confusing and adds frustration to a system specifically designed to simplify your smart home setup.” And a top-ranked customer review on Amazon notes “the overall potential for the Hub v2 is fantastic. Unfortunately, this is not a turn key solution.” The reviewer advises that “you need to be willing to go into the Community forums and find what you are looking for.”

The SmartThings app is burdened both by clutter caused by redundancy, and inconsistency. For instance, the menus that drop down from the top right of the screen are identical on some screens but have different items on others. So you never really know what options are available on a given page unless you actually click on that page, which leads to a feeling of having to hunt around for controls. And the redundancy of being able to pair or configure devices or sensors from a few places within the app may be intended to be helpful, but instead only makes the app feel less understandable and predictable. As a result, we never felt completely familiar with the app, despite many hours of use.

On a basic functional level, setting up a device or an automation can involve going four, five, or even more submenus deep. That’s unnecessarily tedious. And if, for whatever reason, you want to abandon the process and go back to the main menu, you’ll need to back your way out of each page because the app doesn’t have a home or cancel option anywhere. This sounds like a minor complaint, but it comes up frequently in setting up devices, is frustratingly slow, and is completely avoidable.

Another point of confusion is the choice to use modes and routines as complementary concepts. If we have the logic correct, you can create modes such as home, away, sleep, and so on, and then tag each sensor or device as active or not when the system is in a given mode. Routines run within modes as interactions of sensors and devices, but can also cause the system to switch modes. But a user can’t directly trigger a mode change, and is supposed to select a routine to handle that instead. Simple, right?

Runner-up

The Wink hub supports most of the popular wireless protocols and doesn’t need to be plugged into a router.

Easy to set up, compatible with a good-size range of popular third-party devices, and has a cleanly designed and useful companion app.

The Wink Hub supports most popular wireless protocols, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Lutron Clear Connect, ZigBee, and Z-wave Plus. For individual control of a device or even a few, it’s a great bargain, but for automation of several devices we believe the SmartThings hub remains a better option. The Wink does have a few advantages though. One we especially liked was that you can connect it to your home network via Wi-Fi instead of a cable, allowing you to place the hub anywhere in your home you like, which is especially helpful if reception is an issue. And the ability to pair some devices by scanning a barcode is far easier than the SmartThings hub’s often multistep approach.

In our tests we had no trouble pairing the Wink hub with a few smart locks (in fact, it was our test hub for our smart locks guide), as well as a Connected Cree LED bulb, a Nest thermostat, a Nest Cam, and an Amazon Echo. Controlling any of them and setting up notifications is straightforward via the Wink’s companion app, which is far easier to decode and use than the SmartThings app, with a clean, modern dashboard for direct access to devices and sensors as well as especially handy user-created shortcut buttons to frequently used actions.

One foible though is the method for creating automation schemes, dubbed “robots.” It’s an obtuse system of creating logic schemes for actions that tips the Wink into more-advanced-user territory. Anyone familiar with IFTTT will understand the process instantly; however, it’s a modest learning curve that many might choose to forego, relegating the Wink to being a centralized device controller. We also found that the Wink tended to suffer a greater lag time between when we triggered an action to when it occurred, which is a common complaint. Until a recent update, commands were first routed through the Internet to the cloud and back, and so the Wink is faster when controlling some devices directly, but automated actions using robots still hit the cloud first and lag as a result. Despite these flaws, overall we think the Wink’s low price, relatively wide compatibility, and generally consistent and good performance make it a great option for those looking for an entry-level smart-home system without the need for complex automation schemes.

HomeKit, Nest, and Echo

Amazon, Apple, and Google have each staked a claim in the smart home as well. Google snapped up smart-thermostat pioneer Nest a few years ago, and later acquired Dropcam. Despite ending support for Nest’s own hub, the Revolv, Google has remained involved in (and hopefully committed to) home products, and maintains a Works with Nest program that provides standards for third-party products to maintain compatibility with the Nest. Apple has its Works with Apple HomeKit program for products that meet hardware and software standards and that will, in theory, interact with other enabled devices as well as Apple devices seamlessly, including voice control via Apple’s Siri. And Amazon has moved strongly into smart-home voice control with its Internet-connected Echo speaker and its newer variants, the Tap and Dot.

Using Apple’s HomeKit, you can now have otherwise incompatible devices talking to each other without having to go through a middleman hub first. Currently, the options are limited, but this approach to communication—whether via HomeKit or other software platforms—has the potential to dramatically streamline the whole smart-home experience and make the implementation of a DIY smart-home system far less complicated.

Amazon’s breakout hit, the voice-controlled Echo speaker, gets regular software updates to add the ability to interact with and control smart devices and smart hubs. Though Echo isn’t technically a hub in and of itself, it can add voice control to existing devices in a system that otherwise wouldn’t support it—as of now, you can pair it with hubs from Wink, SmartThings, Insteon, and Iris, as well as with individual devices from Nest, Hue, and Lutron Caséta Wireless. We paired the Echo with a few of our hubs and accessory test devices during our testing and found it was a mixed bag. (Note: The Echo gets weekly updates, and, therefore, frequently gained compatibility with new devices.) We could pause or play Sonos speakers via the SmartThings hub but we weren’t able to call up a song. We were able to control an Ecobee thermostat, but other than the novelty of that, we didn’t find it practical for checking the temperature in another room or tweaking the settings.

It’s been our experience that the novelty of simply controlling devices via a smartphone can get pretty tedious pretty fast—in fact we’d say this is an overarching problem with smart-home adoption in the long term. A shorthand example is wanting to turn off a connected light bulb, which easily might require you to locate your smartphone, unlock it, scroll to the lighting app and select it, select the bulb you want to control, and then input your command. Other, better options, such as spoken commands, are coming out, but the reality is that in certain contexts the zeal to make something smart has simply made things less simple to use. We think voice control, such as through HomeKit devices and also via smart controllers such as Amazon Echo, may go a long way toward cutting through some of this unnecessary complexity.

The competition

Lutron’s Caséta Smart Hub is great at controlling plug-in and in-wall switches, but HomeKit expands it beyond lighting.

The Lutron Caséta Wireless Smart Lighting Dimmer Kit does a great job at controlling lights and window shades, but it’s too limited for most people hoping to build out a comprehensive smart-home system because compatible devices must either be HomeKit-enabled or use Clear Connect, Lutron’s proprietary wireless protocol. The kit we tested includes a HomeKit-enabled hub, a pair of in-wall dimmers, and a pair of mini (“pico”) remote controls. Installation of the in-wall dimmer switches requires popping a breaker and some moderate DIY chops, but otherwise it’s a friction-free install, and within a few minutes we were enjoying an extremely responsive lighting setup that we could control directly at the wall, by an app, by schedule, via paired pico controllers (which can be mounted on a wall or left in their stands to sit on a table or desk) or—thanks to HomeKit—using Siri and a voice. Everything just works, and in particular it was interesting to see other HomeKit devices automatically appear in the app, though with limited controls. In particular, door locks aren’t able to be part of the Lutron’s control scheme unless you pair them with a third-party control app. Caséta doesn’t do a fraction of what the other hubs are capable of in terms of allowing for complex triggers and the use of sensors, but for some it may be a big, convenient step up from less-brainy lighting timers, and the HomeKit capability leaves room for development going forward.

We also tested the Insteon Hub Pro with HomeKit, and though there’s much to like about the system, we felt that it’s currently stuck in a gray area: Owners are limited to using Insteon-branded devices or HomeKit devices—and there currently aren’t many of either. The Insteon hub also lacks support for Wi-Fi cameras or Hue-style color-shifting light bulbs, and has little to no notification or alert capabilities. Developments with HomeKit may change our opinion in the near future.

Our initial test of the Lowe’s Iris Smart Hub was a bust initially due to the mandatory requirement of registering with a credit card, which triggered a password issue that left us locked out of our account—and locked into a monthly recurring charge that customer service told us we were helpless to thwart (they also told us we should wait a few days until the charge resolved). Needless to say, it wasn’t the best foot forward for Iris. The company has since reversed its policy and fixed the password issue, and now users can now register without needing to sign up first, which we have since accomplished. Though the system has a lot to offer, including a good range of branded sensors, we think the $10 monthly fee to enable the type of scheduled and sensor-triggered scenarios that are readily available for free from the other hubs we tested just doesn’t make Iris a good value.

The D-Link Staples Connect hub was originally our runner-up pick, as we found it was a pleasingly straightforward alternative for people who want the fun of controlling or even automating a few smart devices. Unfortunately, as we prepared to post this guide Staples sent word that it “will be making an announcement in the coming weeks about what the future of Staples Connect looks like” and that an updated app would remain compatible with existing devices. Until news arrives better explaining the Staples Connect hub’s future, we recommend looking at more-stable options.

What to look forward to

The smart home as a category is very much in flux, and with so many competing standards and platforms, it seems inevitable that big changes will be required for many of us to jump on the bandwagon. At the most basic level, the attraction of a hub is that you can use it to greatly consolidate an otherwise unruly mass of smart devices and companion apps into a single dashboard controller. But the distinction between the notion of directly controlling one or more smart devices and a more holistic approach of automating your devices so they run on a schedule and also interact with each other based on preconfigured scenarios is crucial. Again, it’s been our experience that the novelty of controlling devices via a smartphone can get tedious quickly—and this looks like it will be a significant problem with smart-home adoption in the long term. The reality in certain contexts is that making something smart has simply made it unnecessarily complicated.

The good news is that other, better options are out now and also on the near horizon. As we’ve noted above, Google’s Works with Nest initiative has resulted in wide compatibility of the company’s line of top-shelf smart-home devices, and it has other software initiatives on the way that could be equally impactful. Apple’s HomeKit software has garnered a lot of attention and it has a steadily building stream of compatible devices. And Amazon’s breakout hit Echo, a voice-controlled speaker, has stirred up tons of interest—and perhaps more important, sales—from consumers. In our early tests we’ve been impressed at how using many of these newer devices reduces a lot of the hassle of setting up a system. And we’re more impressed by how powerful and convenient voice control is.

Jumping on the voice-controlled-device bandwagon, in May 2016 Google announced the Google Home device, which, like Amazon’s Echo, is an Internet-connected speaker with built-in microphones. You can ask it to play tunes from Google Play or other music services, for instance, or you can ask it to tell you the population of Greenland. Being that it comes from Google, you might expect its search capabilities to be superior to those of Amazon’s unit, and hopefully it’ll support Google’s broader range of services too. It’s available now, and we’ll begin testing it against the Echo soon.
In September 2016, Wink announced an update to our user-friendly smart hub recommendation. The Wink Hub 2 improves upon its predecessor with a new Wi-Fi radio that supports 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks, an Ethernet port for easy setup, Thread support, and local control for robots—which means no more waiting for the cloud server to pay attention. If you’re a current Wink Hub owner, you’ll be able to migrate all of your pairings to the Wink Hub 2 for a simple upgrade via Wink’s new hub-to-hub transfer process. We look forward to checking out the Wink 2 when it’s available in October.

These newer devices and voice control are still in their early days, and they have plenty of holes that need filling and bugs that need addressing. But even in the short term, if you’re looking to invest in smart-home devices, you would do well to strategize and plan a system with these considerations in mind.

Wrapping it up

Having spent the past few months bathing our home in wireless signals of every stripe and packing it to the gills with sensors, thermostats, locks, and other devices, we are both impressed by what’s routinely possible using low-cost off-the-shelf devices and left wanting by the ample confusion and frustration those devices can cause. As with other electronics, especially network and computing devices, in the right hands this stuff can be made to really sing. For a typical DIYer that’s possible, but the learning curve might put off some, and even the best possible scenario still has substantial holes and pitfalls that can end up being either time- or money-intensive to solve. For now, we think the Samsung SmartThings Hub is a good product that will only continue to get better, but we’re hopeful big changes in the smart-hub category in the near future will give us reason to revisit this guide with major updates.

Jon Chase has been testing gadgets and writing about technology trends and culture since Windows 98/Mac OS 8.5. His work has appeared in a wide range of print and online outlets, including Entertainment Weekly, House Beautiful, Conde Nast Traveler, Laptop Magazine, National Geographic Explorer, Men's Journal, Popular Science, and Tom's Guide, among others. In a parallel universe he wrote trivia questions as a staff writer for Cash Cab and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

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